Few games in recent times have captivated and excited me as much as Plasma Pong. For those who haven't heard of it, Plasma Pong is a pong clone where real-time fluid dynamics affect the motion of the ball. With your paddle you can suck and propel jets of fluid to influence the ball's motion.

The game itself is, personally, quite irrelevant. Playing Pong doesn't interest me - and frankly, I didn't enjoy the gameplay much at all. Why am I raving about it then? Because it is beyond beautiful! The game is just a vehicle for the graphics.

Plasma Pong is easily one of the most gorgeous games I have seen. There is something about the smooth mixing and motion of rainbow swirls that just captivates. I couldn't care less about the action - it's all about the plasma! Which is why the included sandbox mode is so wonderful. Indeed, it is only once you have a good play with the sandbox that you really see the potential of this incredible innovation. In sandbox mode, set up a wall or ten, plonk down some wave emitters and just sit back and watch the beauty of the simulation in action. Switch shaders and all manner of variables for wildly different effects - most of which remain astonishingly beautful. Plasma Pong is undoubtedly a glimpse into the very exciting future of video games, where realistic fluid physics controls the behaviour of the ripples in a pond, the water in a stream, the waves at the beach - even the gusts and eddies of the breeze-filled skies.

As a programmer with a passion for visual electronic art, this one game represents just about everything I love about this field. Just like the ocean, it is beautiful, smooth and elegant. It all just flows... the many and the one entwined. And yet in an instant then it can also be complex, wild and destructive. It is quite just, I think, that one of the most advanced innovations in gaming graphics should accompany the most primitive of games in Pong. Plasma Pong is thus the new bowing, ever so gracefully, to the old.

Congratulations and thank-you Steve Taylor, for this wonderful piece of interactive art.